Colouring Moonlit Winter Snow

Hello Power Poppy Friends!  It’s Christine greeting you here and I’m kicking off a fabulous week of Power Poppy November Releases!  Today you’re in for a very special treat....I get to super-sneak-peek a stamp set coming out on November 1st with today’s tutorial.  It’s a stunning set called O Holy Night, and it celebrates all that I love about the Christmas Season.  

Because this stamp set depicts a gorgeous Church scene on a winter night, I wanted to show you how to colour it in a really serene, but dramatic way.  

I began by stamping the scene onto Cougar Opaque Ivory cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black ink, and then also stamping the scene onto some Eclipse Masking tape, trimming it out,  and creating a mask to go over the image (see above).  I like Eclipse Masking tape for this type of technique because it sticks to the whole image and won’t move.   You will also want to put your image on some scrap paper, ‘cause you’re about to get inky!  Or at least your paper is!  

Then I took my brayer and some Nautical Blue Memento Ink and in an oval pattern I brayered the dark night sky onto the image.  I brayer in layers building colour bit by bit.  Because it is a moonlit sky I wanted it to maintain light around the moon so I avoided too much brayering in that area.  This helps to give the moon a glow.   In this scene the moon is essentially backlighting the Church, so the glow would come around and behind the Church.  The top corners and sides have the deepest colour of sky so there’s lots of brayered ink there.  

Here you can see what it looks like when I was done brayering.  

This picture shows the look of the scene when I lift off the mask, before I start colouring.  See how the glow works for the scene?  

Now I have a white moon, a white Church and white snow.  How can I bring life to these whites and distinguish them from each other?  Let’s keep moving on!

  

Since I want to add some definition to the snow and to the Church I need to add some colour.   The moon and snow aren’t just plain white, they would have tones off all sorts of other colours that bring life to the white.  Above you can see I’ve coloured up the greens peeking through the snow on the trees (YG93, YG95, YG99).  Now with my C00 and B21 Copic Markers I colour in the shadows of the snow on the trees.  The C00 smoothes and softens out the blues in the shadows.  

Next, I want to give the gorgeous full moon a glow.  It doesn’t take much colour so I used some really soft yellows to sweep some colour on the bottom left area of the moon, around the moon and onto the sides of the trees near the moon.  

Then I want some light to be coming from the Church windows so I added some Y00 in the windows and as you can see in the picture below, spilling out of the windows onto the snow.  

Finally,  you can see I’ve added some cool greys and blue to the Church - still making it appear white, but moonlit at night.  I love the peaceful feeling of the scene.  

Here is the finished design.  I added some Picket Fence Ranger Distress pen dotted over the yardstick to create stars in the sky, and then paired it all with My Mind’s Eye Joyous designer paper and some pretty accents.  

And now you can see that white isn’t just white.  It’s all about what you add to it to make it shine on this beautiful night!

Thanks for joining me today.  We look forward to the Sneak Peeks starting tomorrow!  You will love them!